Personal

I’ve just come from my Physical Geography class. It looks to me like it’ll have a fairly strong speculative aspect to it, which is good, because that’ll help me in adapting the concepts to the world in my D&D game.

My visit to the Foothill Career Center this morning seemed productive, and I hope that the leads it generated land me a job. I got an overview of the jobseeking tools provided by the career center and contact info for a few more people, including one gentleman at De Anza who runs a “school for the laid-off” program. I might be able to get paid to go to school, an opportunity I would likely jump at.

Likewise, my visit to the health office was helpful. the cold medicine they gave me has restored my nose to working order, at least for the time being.

So I guess I’m having a good day so far.

You may have noticed that my Ramblings page has taken on a more livejournal-like quality. This is a result of my new policy of writing regardless of whether I have anything to say. Feedback is welcome, as I’m curious whether the increased frequency is worth the decreased quality. As always, suggestions will be considered, but there’s no guarantee I’ll act on them, even in the face of overwhelming public demand.

There are things I should be doing right now, but I prefer to write, so on to other topics…

Financial institutions. Am I the only one who is frustrated nearly to the point of a postal outburst by financial institutions? When are these people going to catch up with the times? If bank technologies advanced half a century overnight, they’d still find themselves firmly entrenched in the 1980’s. Everything is online now, everything is electronic, everything should be fast. Why, oh WHY does it take FOUR DAYS to do a simple funds transfer online? When you compound this with the fact that moving funds from one bank to another online requires an intermediary, and the automated computer systems apparently get the weekends off (?!), it takes TWO WEEKS to pay off my credit card bill so I can buy books for school. This is RIDICULOUS. We live in the INFORMATION AGE, people! Get it through your heads: Pony Express is DEAD! Stop using smoke signals and carrier pigeons! When I need money in one bank instead of another, I shouldn’t have to spend half a month juggling accounts in order to do it without paperwork! Jeezus!

Okay, I think that’s enough ranting on that topic for the moment. I’m a bit more annoyed about this than usual, since waiting for funds transfers is threatening to impact my grades, but this has long been a pet peeve of mine. Sometimes I’m convinced I’d be better off shoving wads of cash into my mattress.

I’d like to take this moment to be grateful that my head no longer aches like it did last night. I went to bed at two and found that I couldn’t sleep because my head hurt. When I sat up, it felt better, so I moved to the living room and slept sitting up on the couch for an hour and a half. Then I woke up and moved back to my room, close enough to sleep that I was able to drop off again without giving my head time to start hurting. 🙂 Luckily, I think I’m getting over this cold, and it’ll only get better from here.

Okay, I think that’s a sufficient quantity of deranged ranting. Time to work on a different form for a bit.

I’ve heard that one of the quickest ways to learn a new language is total immersion. I agree, though my definition is likely different. How many native speakers do you think exist in an environment of TOTAL IMMERSION? Not many, I’d wager. Most people don’t immerse themselves, or even think about language much at all. Most people merely learn what they need to to get by (if that) and then stop there. Tell me, how is this total immersion?

They say that if you want to be a good writer, you have to read, read, read, and write, write, write. I seem to recall… Hold that thought.

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We interrupt this rambling to bring you an account of what interrupted the writing….As I sit and type, music fills the air. I look up, across the cafeteria, and I see that someone is playing the simple wooden piano on the back wall. An Asian girl in a denim jacket is playing a beautiful, floating, classical melody where just moments before she’d been sitting on the bench chatting with a friend. I’m enchanted by the melody, sweet and unexpected. I look briefly around the room, noting the others still present so late in the day: three friends of the piano player and a woman in a hot pink vest with a dayplanner and a cell phone. The girl’s friends go on with their conversation and studying, and the woman with the cell phone goes on scheduling various appointments. I return my attention to the piano player, and listen with rapt attention until the melody concludes. She turns around and I smile, but she just turns and walks to the microwave, backpack in hand. I return to my writing, but after a short time, one of the original player’s friends takes a turn at the piano…

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Ahem. I seem to recall one of my favorite authors (‘though I can’t for the life of me remember which one) saying that he advised writing for at least an hour every single day at the same time. A scheduled hour practicing your craft. If you have nothing to say, say it anyway, brainstorm, write SOMETHING, even if it’s crap, just to get something on the page and time on the clock. Likewise, my English 1B instructor, Mr. Berthiaume, says that it’s important to write a lot, because if you write a lot, you can throw away the crap and just keep the good stuff. If you don’t write much, you have to keep the crap. 80% of writing, he says, is re-writing. I don’t know if I agree with that last bit, because if it’s true, I’ve never gone beyond 20% of writing. I’m somewhat concerned about what kind of grades I’ll get on my essays in his class. He allows re-writes, which is a plus, if I go to the effort. With English 1B on top of Physical Geography, though, somehow I doubt that I will.

I am, however, planning to write just for the sake of writing during free time at school and on the bus, and post my ramblings, so there should be a dramatic increase in the volume on this section of the site some time soon. Maybe I’ll work on some of the other sections of the site, too, such as my Profile or my Writings. I’d like to do some poetry; maybe next time I get the opportunity to take classes I should see if there’s one on composition of poetry. I’d love to focus on the technical aspects of it (there’s that soullessness peeking through) and study poetic forms.

What should I write? Email me ideas at gwythinn (at) gmail (dot) com. You can suggest whatever you like: form, subject, title, character, setting, theme, anything. I’ll use what I like and ignore the rest.

“I think college teaches you techniques and skills, et cetera. And, uh, it teaches you something about the, the craft of writing, but art has to be alive, has to have life in it, and college does not teach you anything about that. It seems to me I have a poem and one line is, ‘This is a poem,’ uh, ‘This is about one human heart.’ And it seems to me that poetry, to live, has to come out of lived human hearts.”

-Lucille Clifton in “The Power of the Word, part 6”

When people see this site of mine, they often complement the writing. They tell me they enjoyed reading what I have written, and that I should write more, and have I considered being a writer? I always respond to this in the same way: I’ve considered it, but I don’t really have anything to say that I think people would pay to read. My cousin told me that I write very well, but there’s no passion in my writing. She’s right, there isn’t. There’s very little passion in me, and the writing reflects that. But like Lucille Clifton says, college doesn’t teach you anything about that.

I’m writing this at school, in the library, second floor. I’m in college. I’m taking English 1B. I want to improve my writing. A couple of years ago, I took a course on Professional Writing Skills. I got an A. But what do I do with that? What good are professional writing skills when there’s nothing I’m dying to say? Maybe I’m in the wrong place. I’m working on my the craft of writing, when I should be working on the life. “College does not teach you anything about that.” But where do I go to learn?

Well, I suppose maybe college *does* teach you something about that, after all. If it weren’t for my English class, I wouldn’t even be thinking about this right now. I wonder, though, if college can answer the question it exposed. If I want to be a writer, I have to have something to write about. How do I add vibrance to my life so that I’ll have something vibrant to write about?

On a side-note, I think that frequent sabbaticals from working life (say, one quarter of every year?) to take some classes would benefit me greatly. Keep me thinking, help to stave off mentropy, and get me some time away from The Machine. Or perhaps, if I strike it rich, I can get a summer home in the mountains and get away from it all for a while every year.

Maybe I should have gone away to college, seen other places, how people are somewhere else. I don’t know. Is it too late? Perhaps. Not in terms of logistics, but in terms of me.

I’m off to see about applying for a job as a time traveller.

I think that, at heart, I’m a grumpy old man. My peers hated me when I was a child; perhaps they knew that there was something a bit unusual about me, that I wasn’t a kid. I was a grumpy old man. I always got along better with adults when I was a child than I did with those of my own age. No patience for youth. I’d be more comfortable, even now, waving my cane and grousing about “those damn kids” and “youngsters today” and “you young punks” than acting like a member of my peer group. Of course, this is an unpleasant attitude to have growing up, mainly because of the responses it draws from others. Now that I’m out of high school, I get along better with my own age group. Nonetheless, I still feel like an old man, wondering at the impetuousness and audacity of teens an twenty-somethings.

Oh well. I suppose, given thirty or forty years, I’ll grow into it. :>

I started school today. In the wake of an increasingly frustrating job market, I’ve decided that it’s time to start doing something productive. If I can’t get paid for the skills I already have, I might as well pick up some new ones in the mean time. So I’ve enrolled in classes at Foothill College, some two hours’ bus ride away from home, but a place that is, in itself, a home of sorts to me.

I’m taking Physical Geography (well, retaking, technically), English 1B, Introduction to UNIX (which is a bit of a joke, given that you’re probably reading this off of a website hosted on the Linux box I installed and maintain as a network server), and Lifetime Wellness, which is a rather pretentious name for weightlifting. The instructors seem knowledgeable and enthusiastic, and the course materials seem interesting. Unfortunately, the bookstore lines are longer than I remember, and the campus buildings have all been renumbered, so I’m having to re-familiarize myself with room numbers. I’ve got an odd sense of nostalgia, coming back after having been away for so long. It’s always a triumph when I remember where something is. Today I rediscovered the computer lab I used to go to. Perhaps I can start updating from school. Unfortunately, it’s going to be a tough quarter, as both the Geography and English classes seem to be very intensive. I expected this for the Geography class, as I’ve taken it before (ahem), but it looks like we’re going to be going through several whole books in the English course. Oh well, we’ll see how it goes.

There aren’t many people left on campus that I recognize; I guess most of the folks I knew have moved on. It sure is strange not seeing the same old familiar faces in the cafeteria before class. *sigh* It’ll be difficult for me, not having a tightly-knit group anymore like Middle College was. I still miss that, and I doubt I’ll ever find an academic situation like it again.

In other news, I may be moving to Sunnyvale or Mountain View soon, which would be a big improvement over Campbell. My dad and I are looking to buy a mobile home. That would put me a lot closer to school, a lot closer to where I want to work, a lot closer to my friends, and a lot closer to the public transit that I need. In addition, it’d probably be cheaper, and the expense would be building equity instead of draining my savings for short-term survival with no long-term payoff.

That’s all for now.

One more warning: this contains graphic descriptions of suffering. Do not continue unless you are prepared for that.

Those on the airplanes were in a compact space loaded with jet fuel; death was probably very quick and relatively painless upon impact. Contrast this with the thousands who spent their mornings trapped in a severely damaged burning building, burning to death, bleeding to death, dying of smoke inhalation, leaping from windows tens of stories above the ground to avoid these fates, becoming trapped, struggling fruitlessly until the collapse of the building some time later, being crushed by falling debris or, worse, slowly suffocating under the weight and in the dust of that debris. If I had to die in this attack and were given my choice of where to be, I would choose the plane in a heartbeat.

Special thanks to free-market.net for use of the American flag graphic, which is located in their Liberty Image Gallery.

I’m going to skip the first few paragraphs of this rambling, because we’ve all heard it a thousand times. A mere three days have elapsed since the “noteworthy incident”, to quote Tom Clancy, which occurred on the morning of Tuesday, September 11th, 2001. In that time, we’ve heard of nothing else. We’ve all heard exactly what happened. We all know it’s a tragedy. We’re all aware that nearly everyone feels terrible for the families of the victims, and that something must be done. These things, while true and vitally important, need not be repeated. Please assume I said them here, and I can get on with saying something else.

Many people, though not all, say that this event is unbelievable, and that they never thought such a thing could happen. To these people, I say that it is NOT unbelievable that a terrorist strike could succeed in America, and that it is a reality of living in the real world. We’re not so different from the rest of the world. Terrible things happen, and yes, they can happen to us too. We’ve been far too complacent for far too long, and now I add my voice to those who have expressed the hope that this will be a wake-up call to America. We are not untouchable. We are not invulnerable. We must be as vigilant as any other nation; we are not so special. (1)

Another common reaction, among our politicians as well as our people, is talk of war. For these people, I have but one question: war with WHOM?! A nation cannot declare war on an unidentified enemy. If a nation had perpetrated such a crime, we would be willing and able to wipe them off the map, with or without the aid of the dozens of nations which have expressed outrage and grief equal to our own. Unfortunately, this crime was not perpetrated by a nation. No nation would act against another in this manner; it would be suicidal, in both a political and biological sense. We are dealing with a much more insidious enemy, one which cannot be defeated with air strikes and tanks and machine guns. We must fight our enemy on its own terms, and that means covertly. Now is the time for intelligence, cloak-and-dagger, and infiltration. We cannot merely choose a nation as a scapegoat and murder the innocent, or we will be no better than the enemy we seek to neutralize.

On a similar note, I’d like to express my outrage and disgust at the numerous acts of racism and violence against Arab-Americans over the past few days. This is UNACCEPTABLE. It is as vile, intolerable, and cowardly as the terrorist act that inspired it. In the America that I know, everyone is innocent until PROVEN guilty, regardless of where they’re from or what deity they worship. I am ashamed to be a citizen of the same country as the individuals perpetrating these crimes. Unlike the terrorism, these are not atrocities being committed against us by an unknown “them”. These atrocities we commit against ourselves. For a country claiming to be the greatest on Earth, when it comes down to the wire, we put up a damn poor showing.

I’d like express my sympathy and empathy for some of the victims that I think have not had their fair share of recognition. Following from my comments on racism, I would like to place first and foremost on my list the many thousands, perhaps millions, of innocent Arab-Americans who now find themselves made the targets of hatred by the uneducated, unintelligent, and just plain shameful among the citizens of this country. Many innocent people now find they must fear for their safety, harassed and threatened by their own fellow Americans. To them I offer my apologies, on behalf of those who have proven themselves too worthless to see the meaning of their own actions and chosen instead to strike blindly at the closest target. I’d also like to highlight the plight of the victims who were inside the twin towers of the World Trade Center. I have heard a great many people cite the few hundred individuals on the airplanes as the primary victims of this terrible event, overlooking the far greater suffering endured by the many THOUSANDS in the towers. I fear a more thorough explanation of my reasoning would be too graphic and in bad taste, so I shall leave it at that for now (2). Suffice it to say that I wish to speak up for these individuals and their families in particular among the victims.

Finally, I’d like to express my gratitude to all of the nations and organizations who have shown support for the United States and her people in the past few days. I find it very telling that even countries traditionally at odds with the USA have spoken out against this act, and I hope that some peace treaties can be drafted and existing alliances strengthened as a result of recent events. I would hate to think that such things as have happened this week would pull the world together behind a common cause for a week or a month, only to return to its previous state of chaos immediately thereafter. Let’s not lose this opportunity to salvage something meaningful from the ashes.

Let us hope for a bloodless resolution to this conflict, increased vigilance and security here in America and world-wide, timely and effective aid for the surviving victims, and long-term improvements in world relations.

Sleep well and be safe, wherever you may live.

Special thanks to free-market.net for use of the American flag graphic, which is located in their Liberty Image Gallery.

Footnotes:

1. For more on the subject of complacency, have a look at my poem from about a year ago, Complacent You and I. In that work I mentioned a bloodless war; it would appear that Complacency has drawn first blood.
2. If you really wish to know, examine the supplement to this rambling, but be warned: it is graphic, and not for the faint of heart.

I spend a lot of time by myself. I stand alone, and I have never found someone who is both able and willing to stand beside me in life. While this saddens me, there’s a wan kind of pride in it. No one has, no one can, no one will, and yet I endure. Like a silent monolith weathering the storm alone while all around humans and animals seek shelter in huts and caves, I remain standing, silent and stoic, when the clouds part.

Some people I know put a music reference at the end of each rant. I usually don’t, but this time one seems appropriate.

“I Am A Rock” by Simon and Garfunkel

My good mood has expired.

Sometimes I feel a primal scream rising inside me. A high-pitched shriek of frustration and anguish which, in my current suburban surroundings, would probably cause at least three neighbors to call the police or rush over in panic. Then again, since I don’t know my neighbors, they might just ignore it. I always suppress this shriek, but one day I will find somewhere isolated enough that I can let it out, rage at the sky about the torture of existence, and, hopefully, come back feeling much more serene without it inside me.

My life isn’t so terrible. On the whole, many many people, perhaps even most people, have worse lives with more problems than I do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pitying myself in comparison to others. Oh, no. I am well aware that EVERYONE has good reason to be miserable.

This makes it worse.

You see, if I knew that somehow my own misery allowed others to live in peace and happiness, if I knew that my suffering lifted the burden from some other soul, at least I could feel that it had some purpose. As it is, I’m miserable, and so are you, and there’s nothing that can be done about it.

DAMMIT, I WANT TO KNOW THINGS.

I’m having a bit of a fit right now. Unemployment and the resulting spending of savings are bad, but worse is the feeling of mentropy that I mentioned two ramblings ago. When I got a job, I stopped pursuing knowledge, I stopped LEARNING things, I stopped doing all the things that DEFINED me! I’ve wasted so much time, and it makes me very angry. I was once ahead of the game, I was 18 and knew more about computers than almost anyone I knew. Now I’m behind the curve. I stood still and the world went rushing past. I’m 21 and that 18-year-old that I once was could code CIRCLES around me. Among non-geeks, I’m a guru. Among geeks, I’m mediocre at best. I hate that feeling. I grew up one of the best. Now I find myself a member of a culture made UP of the best, in which I am unremarkable and insignificant. I’m a little fish in a big pond. I’m not going to claim that it’s not fair. Those folks who are remarkable and significant are smarter than me or more determined than me, and deserve whatever accolades they receive. I am angry because I have not performed to the same level.

I’ve wasted some portion of my potential.

I am angry.

I’m so mediocre a geek, I haven’t been able to find a job doing the only thing I’m good at, working with computers. Perhaps this isn’t a fair evaluation, as this is a bad time to be an unemployed professional geek. There are thousands of us out there right now. Two years ago I put up a resume online. I had zero professional experience and didn’t know what I was looking for. I immediately received several messages, via email and telephone, from interested employers and recruiters. I eventually found a job, which I kept for a year and a half, until cutbacks claimed it. I once again posted my resume on the ‘net. This time I got nothing. Not. A. Damn. Thing. As I said, there are thousands of us out there. Unemployed geeks. The valley is crawling with us.

With my savings dwindling, I’m facing a difficult problem. If I can make money in computers, I’ll have a very lucrative hobby. If I can’t, I’ll have an extremely expensive technology addiction and no marketable skills. And I’m up against several thousand other recently-laid-off geeks, many of whom are more skilled than I am.

Damn it. Damn it all.